International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict ( 6 November)
On 5 November 2001, the UN General
Assembly declared 6 November of each year as the International Day for
Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (A/RES/56/4).
Though mankind has always counted
its war casualties in terms of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians,
destroyed cities and livelihoods, the environment has often remained the
unpublicized victim of war.Water wells have been polluted, crops torched,
forests cut down, soils poisoned, and animals killed to gain military
advantage.
Furthermore, the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) has found that over the last 60 years, at least 40
percent of all internal conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of
natural resources, whether high-value resources such as timber, diamonds, gold
and oil, or scarce resources such as fertile land and water. Conflicts
involving natural resources have also been found to be twice as likely to
relapse.
The United Nations attaches great
importance to ensuring that action on the environment is part of conflict
prevention, peacekeeping and peacebuilding strategies -
because there can be no durable peace if the natural resources that sustain
livelihoods and ecosystems are destroyed.
